Of these 144, 142 patients were intradermally tested for drugs that might have been used at a previous anaesthetic (if those drugs were available) and for all other commonly used anaesthetic drugs including propofol, midazolam and neuromuscular blocking drugs (NMBDs).

Retrieval patients are potentially at risk of awareness due to their higher severity of illness, haemodynamic instability" imposing limits on doses of sedative drugs, risk of equipment failure in the remote environment", high use of neuromuscular blocking drugs, environmental limits of monitoring equipment performance, inadequate clinical performance by inexperienced staff 9,2[degrees] and a lack of awareness of the problem by retrieval staff and follow-up of 'at-risk' retrieval patients.

They concluded "In comparison with the established neuromuscular blocking drugs, vecuronium would seem to represent a significant advance in that controlled relaxation can be readily maintained during surgical procedures extending in duration from some 20 minutes to many hours, without risk of prolonging recovery or unwanted side-effects.

Current recommendations regarding anaesthesia for patients with known motor neurone disease include; avoiding suxamethonium (because of the risk of hyperkalaemia) (10), and exercising extreme caution with the use of non-depolarizing neuromuscular blocking drugs (11).

All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional.